Mistakes? No mistakes here, honest. I'm using "Mistakes Being Marked" as a blog title because it's a convenient match to the name of the other place where I put things on the internet. Look, I ain't no mistake-obsessed pessimist, okay? If my confidence level were an advertisement for shirts in 1948, it'd be this:
Ready for a bright new day!Actually, this might be relevant to the course: can anyone tell me how copyright and "fair use" work? By which I mean, if I grab an image from somewhere (as I've done above), and I simply acknowledge that the image's copyright is theirs and that I'm borrowing it from them, is this "acknowledgment" enough? I mean, should I be worrying about licensing and legal permissions et cetera, or do the finer legalities only apply if I'm making money? And should I be following the laws of Australia, or the laws of the nation where this blog's server is located (wherever that is), or what? Either way I'd guess I'm small enough to go unnoticed, and out of sight is out of jurisdiction, but... what if I'm not?
Any law graduates doing publishing & communications?
I’ve often wondered about how to ‘properly’ cite online, web resources too. On that note, I was also just wondering if I’m the only one who feels that an ‘academic’ article, essay, is ‘academic’ only if the majority of ‘footnotes’ are from printed sources? When I pick up a piece and glance at the footnotes and the reference section - I don’t know why - but I automatically create a preconceived notion of ‘authority’ that a text would have - based on the sources cited. An online article, or blog, or polemic, or any other web discussion - more often than not has a far superior, contemporary writing style than most heavy academic pieces (by style I mean - much more readable, all the rules of Editorial English and Technical Writing in place! - subject verb, string verbs, short sentences, coherent paras, etc, and doesn’t make me doze off). So I actually do enjoy reading them. They also do have great points and opinions. But somewhere at the back of my little head, I know that I take it all with a lot of salt. More salt than I would take, if it were in a journal or any other printed ‘god father’ like gospel publication! Is this weird - this pre-disposition and perhaps, horrible double standard on my part as a reader?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog, I’ve also been thinking about what kind of cyber rules regarding copyright can there be out there? Are they based on where the ‘server’ is ‘physically’ located? Can there be a ‘universal’ and ‘global’ e-legal, e-governance system? Could there be a uniform civil, criminal, and copyright cyberspace code? If these are not in place, how and who will draw them out? Who will be the guardian, the referee, if they were to get breached? Wow! Everything is work-in-progress, huh? Could there be a worldwide constitution? Who is the custodian? Hmmm!
In Uni, I think the 106-526 subject, ‘Ethical and Legal Issues in Publishing’ should be an interesting subject and would probably have scope to discuss all this. It’s a Semester 1 subject. https://app.portal.unimelb.edu.au/CSCApplication/view/2009/106-526
Also nice session at MWF:
http://www.mwf.com.au/2009/content/mwf_2009_events.asp?name=2737
Thanks for your long & thoughtful comment, linear chaos!
ReplyDeleteI think we've been wondering about some of the same things. When traditional law only talks about physical events occurring at specific locations, how can it possibly deal with cyberspace? Is the web an impossible jurisdiction? National & international laws don't seem to have figured any of this out yet, not with any certainty. (Not as far as I can tell, but I'm no lawyer...)
Will we see an international court for cyberspace (like the one for war crimes?!), or will the internet be the wild west, with 4chan Anonymous hackers as vigilante sheriffs?
(thanks for those links, also. btw, you can turn them into real links by typing html codes into the "post a comment" field, like this)
As for the trappings & respectability/authority of "academic"-style writing - I think you're definitely not alone in your "horrible double standard", but it's a weird & complex issue all over. There's a lot of political issues tied up in the use of academic language, too.
Also ps & btw: who are you, & which is your blog? Your "linear chaos" blogger profile is set to private ("not shared" so I can't see), and I guess you go by a different name on the class listing at writingediting09..?
Unless you're not from that class at all? Or if you're being anonymous here on purpose, in which case no worries & forget I asked :)
Oh wait, I see - here you are! Sorry, it was just invisible for a moment, forget I asked.
ReplyDeleteWhoops
Oh thanks! I actually have never blogged before. So, I have no idea how to set these settings, how to get notified when there's a new blog, or a comment posted, etc. I don't know how to turn links from text to hypertext while commenting!
ReplyDeleteHence, my profile did in fact appear as 'not visible'! I had no clue what was in there and how it looked to the world at large! I just goofed around with all of that and tweaked a few things here and there, out of sheer trial and error. Oh, I forgot all about the ning community! Are we all talking there too? Have I missed a lot? Yikes! I am from the 1:15 Wednesday class. No secrets at all. None intended.
Not having internet at home, doesn't make it any easy!! So, here I am in the 1888 building, doing another night-out to catch-up with everything...
Yeah, trial and error is probably the way to go... I'd say just search through the blogger settings one by one and play with them, that's what I did when I started. But having no internet access at home makes it tricky, all right!
ReplyDeleteTo find out every time a comment has been posted on someone's blog post, there's usually a link you can click at the bottom of the blog post that says "subscribe by email" - do that & it will email every new comment to you.
Also don't worry, I don't think people are talking much (or at all) on ning - it's all on the blogs.